


but it's harder than you think

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-04-03 17:42:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Prompt: Rachel kills Ferdinand herself and calls Siobhan to hide the body.
Relationships: Siobhan "Mrs. S" Sadler & Rachel Duncan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	but it's harder than you think

**Author's Note:**

> This is two years old. Sorry if you thought it was new fic! It isn't, it's old. I've been meaning to port it over to AO3 forever and only just managed to wrangle myself into doing it.

“He underestimated me,” Rachel says, when Siobhan opens the door to the hotel room. The red light stripes almost exactly half of her face; the other half of it is green in the light, strange and neon. Siobhan’s daughter. Not Siobhan’s daughter. That perfect break, down the middle.

Ferdinand’s body is only receiving the red light. He’s face down on the floor; Siobhan can’t tell how he died, yet, she’d need to get a closer look.

There’s a faint line of bruising around Rachel’s neck.

“They always do, don’t they,” Siobhan sighs, and she closes the door.

Rachel doesn’t turn her head to look as Siobhan comes in. She keeps sitting just as she’s sitting: next to the pillows on the bed, feet on the floor, hands on her knees. Posture straight in a way Siobhan could never quite get Sarah to manage – she has to stop thinking about Sarah, but this woman could have been her daughter. She would have taken to piano beautifully. Probably the guns as well.

“I have people who can move him,” Siobhan says, standing over the crumpled mess on the floor.

“No,” Rachel says, and her voice is hoarse. She clears her throat, touches fingertips to her neck and folds her hands tightly together over her knees again. “No, I’d like you to do it. If it isn’t an inconvenience.”

Siobhan looks at her. Rachel keeps looking straight ahead. Siobhan isn’t in her blind spot, standing here, but Rachel doesn’t look at her anyways. Her eyelashes flutter with how hard she is not looking at Siobhan.

“Alright,” Siobhan says. “I’m sorry, love. This is never easy.”

“Don’t,” Rachel says. She finally turns her head and looks at Siobhan, straight on, one eye gone and one eye straining so hard for some shark-coldness she’s just not reaching. “Don’t apologize. Don’t call me a pet name. Don’t presume it was or wasn’t easy.”

“I’ll presume the latter, if that’s alright with you,” Siobhan says, voice just a little sharp. She watches Rachel’s shoulders tremble. _You carry your fear the same way she does_, she thinks, but could never – _ever_ – say it out loud. “Believe me, if there’s one thing I know about it’s – this.

“I won’t call you ‘love’ again, though,” she says, and goes back to considering the body. “I’ll need a tarp.”

“Then get a tarp.”

“You should leave, Rachel,” Siobhan says. “Man like that, sure he’s got friends. Or enemies.”

“Not friends,” Rachel says, voice gone hoarse again. When Siobhan looks from Rachel’s corpse back to Rachel she finds Rachel watching her own hands in fascination. Her thumb is scraping, slowly, against the nail of her other hand. “Neither of us were very good at keeping them.”

“Sarah used to do that,” Siobhan says, in a startling display of stupidity. She hates the words the second they come out of her mouth, but they’re out there. She has tarps in her truck, she’ll go get them–

“Everyone seems intent on telling me that, lately,” Rachel says, but her hands do stop. “Is Kira alright, by the by.”

“Yes, she’s fine,” Siobhan says. “She and Charlotte are safe.”

“Charlotte,” Rachel says, sounding blankly surprised. She closes her eye and huffs out a breath. Then she sucks another breath in, opens her eye. She’s closer, now, to whatever cold thing she is trying to be. “I am glad she’s safe,” she says, and looks at Siobhan again. “Don’t tell her.”

“I won’t,” Siobhan says quietly. She heads towards the door.

“Siobhan,” Rachel calls after her. Siobhan stops. All the mother-bones in her aching body see the way Rachel is sitting, sad and small and alone, and call Siobhan to hold her. She could hold Rachel’s whole skull in the palm of one hand. She wonders when the last time is that someone did that: held Rachel, measured the weight of Rachel’s bones with anything resembling gentleness. She wonders if Rachel could bring herself to cry, or if she would just go still. 

“Sarah is lucky to have you,” Rachel says. 

“Rachel,” Siobhan says, and Rachel says: “Don’t.” Again. Her voice shivering at the edges.

“Just get rid of him,” Rachel says. She swallows. The bruises on her throat flex and then go still. “Please,” she adds, voice dwindling in her throat.

Siobhan nods, once, goes to get the tarp. The question of Rachel lingers around the corners of her mind as she goes, a strange and uncomfortable mixture of Rachel’s folded hands and the idea of those fingers on piano keys that have – by now – gone stale with dust.

When she comes back into the hotel room with the tarp, Rachel has already left.

**Author's Note:**

> But it's harder than you think  
Telling dreams from one another  
And you thought the lions were bad  
Well they tried to kill my brothers
> 
> And felled in the night  
By the ones you think you love  
They will come for you
> 
> Felled in the night  
By the ones you think you love, love  
\--"Daniel in the Den," Bastille
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
